[ Thursday, July 31, 2003 ]
I almost posted to this thing the other night. In the midst of a 30-minute-crying-bucketfuls-choking-wailing-in-front-of-my-computer-screen breakdown.
I'm really glad that I just closed everything down.
The thought process of a poet? What is that really? I drive down the road & this story builds in my head. It comes in snippets. It comes in long out of breathe phrases. It comes one word at a time. But it's almost like falling into a trance. Or falling so deeply inside a scene that the actuality of the world fades / morphs / dims. And then I feel like I am suddenly living inside the poem. Memorizing the spectacular hues of green light reflecting on glass. Internalizing everything unspoken in the air that we breathe.
I speak to myself in line breaks. When no one / everyone is watching. Inhale & refuse to let go of the feeling.
When it doesn't come easily for me. Or when I have to search for that voice, I feel like my entire psyche is out of sync. I'm not me. & it leads up to sobbing breakdowns in front a computer/ in a car / in the middle of the highway / balled up in the woods. Strange.
But after my little meltdown I tried to sleep, could not, took an Advil for the headache & ended up turning out something I was really proud of. Something that had been on my mind for a few days. Not nagging. But just there. Just a little piece of knowledge that altered one part of my world.
Dreams. Do you let something that you've thought about, visualized, lived for just go without a fight, without your best attempt to make it work? Or is there ever a time when you just have to be practical & say 'this isn't working'. 'It might not work.' And then just give up. When I was younger I would have shouted an emphatic Hell No! Now. I just don't know. The realist in me is trying to take the dreamer hostage. Trying to say 'you can't do this.' 'It will never amount to anything.' 'Why bother.' The dreamer in me is trying it's best to whisper. 'I want a white couch in the corner with twinkly white lights.' 'You can sell your art.' 'You can have the shop you've lived for since 1997.' 'You can host poetry readings in the evenings, create a writers group.'
I really want to make a go of it. I've wanted it for so long, I don't know how to let the idea go.
So I don't know if I will let it go.
Yesterday, while holding Cody, I just bawled. I was cooing to him, trying my best to get him to goo and gaa & I told him. You are such a beautiful, beautiful boy. & that just did it for me. So many times I've told someone...you look so pretty, you're so sweet, you look beautiful. But I can't say with any certainty that I've ever told anyone that they are beautiful. I was just overcome with the thought...that I would just like to give him so much love while he's little that it will last him his whole life. That he'll just be cocooned in that tenderness & always feel it, tugging at his insides. I really can't imagine that child ever experiencing a hurt. Though it makes us stronger, even more beautiful, I really can't imagine the ache of ever watching him suffer.
When he was just four days old we had a spell where he quit breathing. Lisa paniced, dad started praying & Marcy turned him upside down and did the equivalent of the baby heimlich.
Holding him yesterday, with his head cuddled in my neck, that frail little body lying on my chest...the only thing that mattered was the breathing. How it all boils down to that one thing. To sustain us...to calm us...to regulate our bodies...to moniter health...to get us through...to alleviate pain...to help us focus. The breathing.
Last night when I came home I just felt awful. Basically, the desicions I'm having to make right now are just weighing down on me. Plus, a wasp crawled up my pants leg & stung me 5 times before I could jerk down my pants & kill it. ( I swell, but thank god my throat doesn't.) And then, lying on the table was this little envelope with my name & address printed in pencil. Five months after I left the children's home, one of my girls wrote. I opened up the envelope & it was folded in quarters with 'Miss Becky' on the outside & and inside an I printed on one half, you printed on the other & a heart connecting those two words.
It just meant the world to me. Those kids were/are so much of my inspiration. And the hope that I tried to give to them by seeing them as, not kids with labels attached, but kids with beauty & talent & creativity.
That letter for me...is the most profound proof that yes, in some small way, I did make a difference. To at least one kid. Who will grow up to have her own. That after five months of not being in her life daily, she still thinks about me & what I taught her by delivering hope in the form of laughter & words.
It really is such a small thing. But my god, it means so much. It has brightened up a really dull part of my life & made me feel.
I've been damp-eyed all week. Just feeling so much...I guess I should say gratitude. Because this is such a beautiful, beautiful life. Especially when we are given the ability to love with all that we have & see with all that we are.
I'll end it on that.
Much love. From everything that is anything inside of me. Much love.
~ Rebecca 11:23 PM [+]
